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Ten years ago, these words from The Song of Songs were read at our wedding. They have always expressed the depth of my love for her in a better way than I ever could.

“Set me like a seal on your heart, like a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death, passion as relentless as the grave. The flash of it is a flash of fire, a flame of the LORD himself. Love no flood can quench, no torrents drown. Were a man to offer all his family wealth to buy love, contempt is all he would gain.” —Song of Songs 8:6-7

Ten years ago, I vowed my love and my life to her and I have never regretted it for one moment. She is the best wife, best mother to our daughter, and best friend I could have asked for, and I thank God every day that he brought her into my life.

Happy Tenth Anniversary my love! May we have many, many more together.

Today is a special Throwback Thursday. It marks the anniversary of two historic events tied to the state of my birth.

On June 12, 1776, the Fifth Virginia Convention unanimously adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights. This little known document drafted by founding father George Mason—with the assistance James Madison, Patrick Henry, and others—influenced both the United States Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Bill of Rights.

On June 12th, 1967, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of Mildred and Richard Loving in Loving v. Virginia, overturning bans on interracial marriage across the country.

That these two historic events occurred on the same day 191 years apart reminds of a well-known saying that Dr. Martin Luther King quoted on several occasions: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It also teaches us what Dr. King knew from his own life and ministry, that we are the moral agents that must keep bending that arc the right way.

That one day, we will all hold hands and D A N C E in heaven, like birds on trees, being moved by the warm magnolia breeze, like purple annuals and yellow perennials growing in the same garden of love.